2d puzzle

Last month Child of Light was offered up as free download for all Xbox Live Gold members. LittleRocket took this as an opportunity to finally check out this highly praised game. As always you can check out a video of our playthrough here.

The story of Child of Light is based on King’s daughter called Aurora. The King’s wife passes away and the King eventually marries a second wife. On a Friday night before Easter 1895, Aurora went to sleep and her skin became as cold as ice. Everyone thought that she was dead. Aurora awakens in a mythical land called Lemuria. This is where the story begins.

Of the bat we have to say we really love the art style of the game. The surroundings and the character all have this simplistic but colorful look. Aurora herself is 3D but is styled like a 2D character so to make her not look out of place with the 2D backgrounds.

The first section of the game is spent traversing through a dark forest while Aurora is talking poetically about where she is and how she feels. Oh also the dialog in this game is supposed to rhyme like poetry. A simple puzzle of moving an object to get to higher ground is dispatched with haste. The game doesn’t seem to force you to go down one specific path. Even if you can’t completely stray from the main path it’s good that the game gave the player the freedom of movement.

After walking for a while and seeing some creatures from afar, Aurora breaks down. She just wants to wake up from her nightmare. This is when we meet Firefly. This little character can be controlled by the second player. Firefly helps Aurora by collecting little orbs that go towards things like her health or mp. One light puzzle later we find ourselves a sword and with that our first battle ensues.

The battle system is very reminiscent of old JRPGs which Child of Light gets influence from. Firefly can make the wait period longer for your foes by shinning light on them. This would help you to have two turns before your enemy even has the opportunity to fight back. Child of Light also has a skill grid where you can learn new skills from the skill points you get from battle.

We encounter different enemies as we traverse through the forest. Slowly getting tougher and also multiplying in numbers. The environments are quite varied as we go through scenery with a lots of trees to scenery completely made up of machinery.

We arrive to a large section of a building with what seems like guards protecting a glass with an angel on it. After a small puzzle we break the glass which brings the guards to life. Our first boss battle. The fight itself is as challenging as you would expect from a first boss battle in a game. This is where you see that having a second player slow down your foe really helps especially when there are multiple enemies.

After the battle is over a lady comes out of the broken glass and begins telling Aurora of the grander scheme of things. Aurora wants to wake up but she learns that for her to get back to her father there are a few things that she has to do first. The lady grants us the ability to fly before she bids us farewell. This is where this quick look ends.

Thank you for reading and thank for all the support you have given LittleRocket.

Dark monochrome puzzle plaformer Limbo is a fantastic showcase of how simple solid controls can really help make a game an enjoyable experience. At first I thought the game would be a long playthrough but it lasted less than three hours. This made the game short, sweet and simple. Video version can be found here.

Story

About a quarter of way through the game you will find yourself asking why. Why am I racking my brain trying to figure out this bloody puzzle? What am I going to get at the end of this? That question is answered about three quarters of the way into the game. Spoiler Alert! The character seems to be doing this to find a girl. We never find out more about her, we don’t even see her face. All we see is her back. To be fair when I saw her I instantly wanted to find out more about her. She became my pushing force to find out more.

Gameplay

The puzzles in this game really show how much attention was paid to make them good. They are well thought out with some making the player not just think horizontally, but vertically too. Near the end of the game gravity and magnetism comes into play and timing also plays a big part in making sure your little character makes it through. One aspect of the game that I personally liked was that it felt as though the enemies in this game were not there to simply stop the player from moving forward but to actually drive the game and story forward.

Presentation

The game is easy on the eyes. It is done in a monochrome style so you won’t be seeing much of a color pallet here but you won’t miss them. It is an effective style which helps create a creepy atmosphere. The music is subtle but also loud when something important is happening on screen.

Bad

Like I previously mentioned in the half way review the only issue I have with this game is sometimes the checkpoint placement can be off.

Closing comments

This is a short and sweet game. I haven’t played a good platformer with good puzzles in a while so playing this game was a welcome change. I highly recommend Limbo.